Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Interpretation
Beauty exists for its own sake, regardless of its purpose.
In this quote, Emerson reflects on the idea that beauty should not be justified by its usefulness or practicality. Instead, it has intrinsic value and significance, suggesting that the mere presence of beauty in the world is a valid reason for its existence, inspiring us to appreciate and celebrate the aesthetic aspects of life without needing a functional rationale.
In practice
In a discussion about art and its significance, one could quote Emerson to emphasize that beauty holds value beyond practicality.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Dead men do not cooperate with grace. Unless regeneration takes place first, there is no possibility of faith.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.
The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining.
The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; every spear of grass-the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, all these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.